Canada's Coastlines:
The Longest Under-Defended Borders in the World
CHAPTER FIVE:
The
Need for a
“It
is very clear that there is a policy vacuum in the maritime security area.” (Retired)
Vice-Adm. Gary L. Garnett, National Vice-President for Maritime Affairs, Navy
League of Canada
“If
we had a Prime Minister and a Privy Council Office that made emergency
preparedness, security and intelligence critical functions by making them the
primary focus of the Privy Council machinery, with extensive resources for
assessment and with some ability to help man operation centres, then there
would be a clear signal to the entire system of the importance of security
preparedness in the eyes of senior leadership. ”
Dr. Thomas Axworthy, Chairman, Centre for the Study of Democracy, Queen's
University
Several of the witnesses who
appeared before the Committee during the last six months called for a
replacement of ad hoc
decision-making across the broad spectrum of security issues facing the
federal government. Many of them would like to see a national security policy
underpinned by a national security structure.
While
this report focuses on Canada’s coastal security, the same policy and
structural flaws that undermine Canada’s maritime security undermine
Canada’s national security across the board.
Although the Canadian Navy’s
first traditional responsibility has been the defence of Canada, in truth, the
potential for assaults on any of our three coasts or threatening activity on
the Great Lakes has not been taken seriously since World War II. Canada’s
Navy’s “blue water” theory quite rightly has always been that it makes
more sense to contain threats to Canada as far away from Canada as possible.
That approach once made sense.
With a few exceptions – most notably Pearl Harbour –North America has been
a haven from war over the years. But the dynamics of combat have clearly
changed.
As Vice-Admiral Ronald Buck,
Chief of Maritime Staff, Department of National Defence,
told the Committee: “the terrorist has changed the battle space . . . the
terrorist has altered the way we think about domestic security.”
Admiral Buck’s “battle
space” now includes North America. Except
. . . the Canadian Navy is still not defending Canada’s littoral
waters in any meaningful way. As
we pointed out earlier, the Navy’s so-called “coastal defence” vessels
are not used to defend Canada’s coasts.
They are primarily used for training for naval reserves, with limited
underwater mapping and minesweeping capability.
The Canadian Coast Guard, in
itself, is not defending Canada’s coasts either. Excepting
rare incidents like the Turbot War, its ships are unarmed and so are its
crews. Unlike the U.S. Coast Guard the Canadian Coast Guard is not a
constabulary force. Its primary roles include search and rescue, icebreaking,
maintaining navigational aids, enforcing fisheries regulations and offering
its vessels up as taxis to other departments and agencies.
The vast majority of suspect
vessel boardings (there have only been 23 in the past five years) have been
conducted by RCMP officers, either from their own limited fleet of vessels,
(see appendix X, Volume 2) or by hitching a ride on Coast Guard vessels. If
this seems like scant protection of Canada’s massive Western and Eastern
coastlines, the situation gets worse in the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great
Lakes, where RCMP witnesses acknowledge they have virtually no capacity to
deal with vessels that might represent a threat to Canadians in particular and
North Americans in general.
The Arctic is clearly less of a
terrorist threat, but it is increasingly vulnerable to legal territorial
challenges as the Northwest Passage becomes a potentially lucrative trade
route because of global warming and mineral exploration becomes more feasible.
Producing Arctic oil is economically feasible at between $US 30-$35 a barrel,
and drilling for Arctic gas is already feasible at current market rates.
The threats to both Canada’s
security and Canada’s sovereignty have increased dramatically in recent
years. How has the federal government responded at the top in the areas of
policy, operational coordination, and expenditures on maritime defence?
Response
at the Strategic Level to Maritime Security
In the wake of 9/11, as we
reported earlier, the government established the Interdepartmental Maritime
Security Working Group (IMSWG) “to coordinate federal response to
marine security, analyze our marine systems for security gaps, and develop
possible mitigation initiatives to address these gaps.”
Seventeen federal departments and agencies are members of this working
group. It is chaired by Transport Canada.
Transport Minister David
Collenette outlined his
vision for IMSWG in a letter to Senator Colin Kenny, Committee chair, on June
17, 2003: “Effective coordination is paramount for the success of all
marine security activities. Up to $16.2 million will be split among the
departments for enhanced coordination and collaboration.”
Mr. Collenette described the Interdepartmental Maritime Security
Working Group as “the centrepiece of Canada’s marine security
coordination.”
If IMSWG is indeed “the
centrepiece” of improved Canadian Maritime security, a number of questions
come to the fore.
The first pertains to the
attention span of any arrangement among government departments and agencies to
address major problems. What happens to the arrangement when crises are
perceived to have abated? The
history of IMSWG is a textbook example. In reality, IMSWG is simply the
resuscitation of the Interdepartmental Program and Review Committee, which was
founded in 1991 in the wake of the Osbaldeston Report to enhance the
efficiency and improve the delivery of federal marine fleet programs.
Captain
Larry Hickey, Assistant Chief of Staff, Plans and Operations for Maritime
Forces Atlantic, Department of National Defence,
told the Committee that an opportunity was missed:
“It
seemed as though we were on the way to cracking the code for real
interdepartmental coordination and effective employment of our maritime
resources. That was not to be the case. The 1990s saw the stagnation of
interdepartmental relationships . . . the “Interdepartmental Concept of
Maritime Operations fell into disuse. Budgetary constraints were the main
culprit . . . The Interdepartmental Program Coordination and Review Committee
(IPCRC) was disbanded in September, 2001.”
In fact, that Committee –
surprisingly – was disbanded on
September 17, 2001 six days after
the twin towers of the World Trade Centre went down. According to information
the Committee received from the Department of National Defence, the IPCRC
purpose was "to act as the federal forum for identifying government
program requirements for ship support, for coordinating related
interdepartmental activities at sea and for facilitating the employment of the
government's fleets of vessels and aircraft." However, our DND
explanation added, as time passed "interdepartmental communication and
cooperation matured to such a degree that IPCRC oversight
was no longer
necessary."
That Committee, so fragile in
nature that it was neglected for years and then abandoned, is the so-called
“centrepiece of Canada’s maritime security coordination.”
The security of Canada’s coastal
waters is clearly going to remain problematic for Canadians – and all North
Americans – for many years to come. Under the rules of asymmetrical warfare,
the more relaxed Canadians become about threats from the sea, the more likely
they are to become victims of a terrorist initiative. In times of fiscal
restraint and perceived lack of urgency on any given issue, departmental
bureaucracies that have been cooperating on that issue tend to turn their
attention to priorities in their own bailiwicks. That is what happened before.
That is what could easily happen again.
A number of our witnesses, while
applauding the gesture of attempting to improve security communications within
the Canadian government through the Interdepartmental Marine Security Working
Group, expressed doubts as to how significant a role IMSWG is playing even
now, and how likely it is to sustain any degree of momentum into the future.
As Dr. Peter T. Haydon, Senior
Research Fellow at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie
University, testified:
“I
believe [IMSWG] is working, but I am not convinced that it is working at all
the problems that need to be worked at. It does not have the authority to
direct that things happen. It is a staff committee that produced a memorandum
to cabinet back in, I believe, November or early December that made some
changes. Again, there is no sense of urgency or importance to that
committee.”
Dr. Danford W. Middlemiss, of
the Department of Political Science, also from Dalhousie University,
also had good things to say about IMSWG, but pointed out that it is powerless
either to create policy or direct reform: “If we simply rely on the very
good work from these interdepartmental groups that are working to find the
gaps, they will, and then nothing more will happen because nothing has ever
happened again in the past. We need policy.”
An End to Silos
The
Committee believes that it is important to emphasize that one basic problem
with turning to committees composed of a variety of departments and agencies
for direction on security is that each of these departments and agencies has its own legislation and its
own mandate, and the security of Canadians is rarely the primary mandate.
Not only is it doubtful that IMSWG will ever create policy, or gain the
authority to “direct that things happen,” it is doubtful that it should
create security policy, given unfocused scope of priorities of its members.
On the
question of authority, consider this exchange between Senator Day and Gerry
Frappier, Director General, Security and Emergency Preparedness, Transport
Canada, and Chair of IMSWG:
|
Sen. Day:
“Your working group is ensuring that the regulations are
developed but they are not then ensuring that they are implemented.” Mr. Frappier: “You are correct. Each minister has that responsibility . . . if there are issues between ministers, they will be handled through the cabinet and cabinet committees.” |
Unfortunately,
at the level of cabinet and cabinet committees to which Mr. Frappier refers,
another flaw emerges. Former
Prime Minister Kim Campbell dissolved the Cabinet Committee on Security and
Defence in 1993. Dr. Thomas Axworthy, once principal secretary
to another Prime Minister –Pierre Elliott Trudeau – told the Committee
that the dissolution of this committee had
been a “terrible decision,” and he called for its restoration with
a muscular support staff in the Privy Council Office:
“
. . . we need a major increase in our central capability to manage the
emergency preparedness file. We
need to have a major political buy in. We
should have the cabinet committee reappointed, chaired either by the Deputy
Prime Minister or the Prime Minister, to have a major increase in the Privy
Council resources. In my paper, I
call for a preparedness committee – National Security Council in the United
States and Preparedness Council in Canada.
Those organizational steps would begin to have a major impact.
The
National Security Council in the United States has a staff of about 200.
They have 25 to 30 who man the situation room in the basement of the
West Wing, which was put in place by former President
Kennedy in 1961-62. We need
something similar in Canada. We
need a body of that magnitude to, daily, collect intelligence, prepare
intelligence briefings for ministers and for the Prime Minister, disseminate
the intelligence throughout the system and participate in joint exercises.”
Muscle Where It Matters
The
Committee believes that Dr. Axworthy was exactly right when he
testified that, while government generally needs to operate vertically – so
that various departments and agencies can focus on their own priorities –
there are issues that are of such importance that they demand horizontal
treatment. These issues, said Dr. Axworthy, will not get the attention they
deserve unless they are handled at the very centre of the power structure:
“There
are one or two or three horizontal issues where you can get the whole system
to understand this is a priority, but that takes the muscle of the Prime
Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office at the centre.”
At
the moment, policy and strategy development is in the hands of a committee
composed of borrowed bureaucrats from various departments and agencies, with
no powerful cabinet minister to report to. The Interdepartmental Marine
Security Working Group is doing its best, but, ask yourself, “Is this the
way Canadians want an issue as vital as maritime security handled?”
“In
respect of what we have been trying to do to bring this together in a more
formal way, the IMSWG put together a memorandum to cabinet entitled
“Addressing Vulnerabilities in Canada’s Maritime Security.” This had an
interdepartmental plan based on a risk management strategy and gives an
excellent basis for the foundation of a strategy. There is currently a bit of
a problem in that it is within this memorandum to cabinet, which is covered by
cabinet confidentiality. We are working on that. We will bring the text out.
However, once it is out, it is very important that it be brought forward as a
national Maritime security plan and that we work hard to get some experts
together to put it forward as a marine strategy.”
Captain Peter Avis, Director of Maritime Policy, Operations and Readiness,
Department of National Defence
Gerry
Frappier, Chair of IMSWG,
was not certain that the memorandum would ever be approved as government
policy: “As to whether we will produce a document that is the policy, we
have not decided on that.”
Put a Strong Hand on the Tiller
Members of the Committee believe
that, on an issue as vital as maritime security, trying to direct from the
circumference rather than the centre is a recipe for the continuation of the
two most desperate problems at the operational level: under-funding and
uncoordinated responses.
Without a National Maritime
Security Policy, inadequate funding will persist. An earlier section of this
report dealt specifically with the lack of resources currently available to
the Navy, the Canadian Coast Guard, the RCMP, and other key components of
Canada’s marine defence. There is no shortage of evidence that they are all
under-funded, and they will continue to be under-funded without a National
Maritime Security Policy.
Captain Larry Hickey, Assistant
Chief of Staff, Plans and
Operations for Maritime Forces Atlantic, described the problem when various
departments and agencies are forced to decide on an ad
hoc basis who will take the lead to deal with a problem:
“One
of the things that we have learned from these exercises that we have done is
that establishment of the lead agency for any event tends to be somewhat
problematic. People do not want to make eye contact when talking about this
because usually, if you are the lead agency, you end up paying.”
Not only does this create an
overall lack of resources, but Captain Hickey pointed out that it can lead to
delays in decision making in times of crisis:
“There
can be a lot of time wasted at the beginning of an incident because the
departments go in with a very narrow perspective, generally speaking. I am
talking about a reactive situation, not one where we have had a few days to
think about it. It is happening now, and we have to deal with it.”
Captain Hickey cited one example
in particular: “About a year ago, we had an incident with a container
vessel coming into Halifax with a suspicious container on board. Three or four
different agencies knew about the container, but each reacted differently. As
a result, we realized that there was a need to formalize a process to react to
intelligence. The RCMP took that lead.”
The Committee appreciates the
attempts of the Interdepartmental Marine Security Working Group to bring
different players together to improve responses to crises, learning from each
mistake. But without centralized direction, this is likely to be a slow
learning curve, which could prove deadly.
If IMSWG continues to be “the
centrepiece of Canada’s marine security coordination”, neither the
resources nor the systems required for cohesive responses to maritime security
crises are likely to be put in place.
Security analysts who appeared
before the Committee offered various suggestions as to how a National Maritime
Security Policy could best be developed and managed. It was proposed that a
separate department for security be created, that a parliamentary committee
take charge, or that a cabinet committee of ministers with some responsibility
for defending our borders (such as the defence minister, the solicitor
general, and the minister for national revenue) take the helm.
No witnesses outside the
government, and few within the government were willing to argue that Transport
Canada should continue to run the show. Transport Canada has become largely a
regulatory department in recent years, with far fewer resources and heft than
it once possessed. The only reason it seems to be chairing a committee charged
with marine security coordination has to do with bureaucratic jurisdiction: The
Marine Transportation Security Act is a Transport Canada administered act
that provides it with the authority to take charge of marine security.
Unfortunately, the department does
not have the assets any longer to perform this role. Transport Canada should
be a regulatory department like the Department of Finance and refrain from
trying to run things like IMSWG and the Canadian Air Transport Security
Authority (CATSA). The fact that Transport Canada has none of the resources or
coordinating capacity to defend Canada’s coastlines seems to be irrelevant
to decision makers.
The Committee does not believe
that Transport Canada should be in charge of efforts to fill the huge gaps in
Canada’s maritime security, nor does it believe that IMSWG has the authority
or the structure to lead to meaningful change.
Nor does the Committee believe
that a parliamentary committee or a cabinet committee of security related
ministers would hold sufficient sway to provide adequate momentum to solving
our problems with coastal security.
Prof. Haydon’s
quote bears repeating
“
. . . somehow you have to transform that interdepartmental committee, which
does not sit at a terribly high bureaucratic level, into something with teeth,
so that someone can say “This is bad.” There has to be an avenue by which
such urgent matters can be taken into cabinet, decisions made and directives
given.”
From
Coastal Security
to
the Big National Picture
It had not been the intention of
our Senate Committee to deal with national security architecture at this point
in our work. This report is focusing on coastal security as part of a set of
reports intended to serve as building blocks toward building a better Canadian
security structure for all Canadians.
·
Canadian Security
and Military Preparedness
(February, 2002) was an overview of defense and national security issues
·
Defence of North
America: A Canadian Responsibility
(September, 2002) addressed air and sea defences of the continent.
·
For an Extra 130
Bucks… Update On
Canada’s Military Financial Crisis –A View From The Bottom UP
(November, 2002) described the lack of political will to fund Canada’s
security and defence and the need for military leaders to have the freedom to
be more assertive in dialogue with Parliamentarians.
·
The Myth of
Security at Canadian Airports
(January, 2003) detailed the inadequate security at Canadian airports which
was only exceeded by Canadian ports.
So, if
the Committee’s focus in this report is coastal security, why raise the
issue of the need for a national security infrastructure? Because the
superstructure that would work to implement improved coastal security will
also work as an umbrella for federal crisis management generally. Terrorist
attacks, the U.S. File, intelligence coordination, ice storms, power outages,
coastal defence – these kinds of top-drawer issues and events deserve their
own crisis management portfolio. This issue will be further examined in a
later report, but the Committee brings it up now because coastal defence is
important enough to fit into the package of responsibilities included in the
portfolio.
It would
also be fair to say that timing is perfect for the introduction of this
concept. Major changes at the
centre are not made at the end of the mandate.
It takes the prospect of a new administration to bring these issues to
play, and that time is now.
Proposal
for a New National Security Structure
Background
Conventional
wisdom dictates that one should first have a clear national security policy
before creating a national security structure. Structure is always supposed to
follow policy. In the case of national security, that doesn’t necessarily
apply.
National security is a core issue
for Canadians right now, the way national unity was for the better part of two
decades. The nature of the major threat to Canada’s security and the
security of our continent have clearly changed, and Canada needs to move
quickly to respond.
The Committee believes that the
Government of Canada should prioritize national security as an issue the way
Prime Minister Trudeau prioritized Federal Provincial Relations as an issue in
the 1970s, when the Prime Minister gave that file a separate bureaucracy in
the Privy Council Office (PCO).
Our current approach epitomizes
the muddle through, ad hoc response to crises in which Canadians almost seem
to take an inordinate pride.
The departments currently
contributing to Canada’s national security framework, such as it is, operate
under mandates defined by legislation, written or enacted at different times,
with different objectives. The current attempt to improve one aspect of
national security – through the committee called IMSWG – is indicative of
the government’s general approach to national security: call fiefdoms
together every now and then to discuss the issue.
That might do if national security
were a back burner issue, but it is not. We cannot make Canada a safe house.
But we must optimize the use of our scarce, middle power resources if we are
to do the best job we can at making Canadians safe today and their children
and grandchildren safe in the future.
This cannot be accomplished
through the use of ad hoc committees, and it cannot be accomplished under the
direction of junior ministers.
We need a crisis centre, for both
man-made and natural disasters, and we need it close to the centre of power.
We do not want it in the Prime Minister’s hands, as such, because he/she has
many fish to fry. But we want it close enough so the Prime Minister can be
briefed regularly and get involved when necessary.
What
kind of crises require a strong hand at the centre? Issues such as the Air
India Bombing, the ice storm, the floods in Manitoba and Quebec, SARS, West
Nile Virus, the Ontario Power failure, 9/11 and the B.C. forest fires come to
mind. Not to mention the F.L.Q.
crisis, the OKA crisis, the attack on the Turkish Embassy, mad cow disease,
and the terrorist threat that could, if not well handled, kill a lot of
Canadians, undermine our economy, and erode our relationship with our closest
political and economic ally.
Generally speaking, response to
natural disasters flows to the departments of National Defence and Health
Canada, while man-made disasters tend to become the responsibility of the
Solicitor General. In both cases,
a myriad of other departments and agencies become involved depending on the
nature of the incident.
Most existing action charts
indicate that the Minister of National Defence or the Solicitor General are
the lead Ministers, but experience has shown that as the incident reaches a
certain size the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister, out of
necessity, assume the lead because:
o The problem has become too big and involves too many departments
o The responsible Ministers are too junior
o The appropriate lead department is reluctant because assuming the lead means assuming much of the cost o The lead department does not have sufficient influence to ensure cooperation of others
o The politics of the situation require the Prime Minister to be seen to be in charge
The
problem is actually far more complex than the foregoing but it is sufficient
to say that PCO/PMO is the only organization with a pan-governmental outlook,
understanding and clout.
Having said that, there are only
ten analysts in the Security and Intelligence Secretariat at the PCO, the
Prime Minister’s department. There
is no national operations centre, with the necessary backup facility although
several departments do have operations centres of one sort or another.
Communications facilities out of PCO/PMO lack sufficient redundancy and
rudimentary things like independent generating power do not exist at the very
centre of our government.
Properly
equipped and organized facilities are difficult to locate, expensive to build,
hard to appropriately staff and successive governments, when they have
considered the question at all, have concluded that “the time was not quite
right.”
The time now is right.
We have a record of recurring ‘incidents’ and know that the world
is getting smaller, more complex and dangerous.
Ad hockery is seen as mismanagement and lack of caring. If governments
are going to retain power, they should understand that Canadians want their
tax dollars, assets and resources utilized effectively and efficiently in
times of crisis. History rewards prime ministers and presidents who are
prepared.
Proposed
New Central Architecture
for
Government Priorities
In the early 1970’s when the
Quebec file was the central concern facing the Federal Government, Prime
Minister Trudeau moved Gordon Robertson, the Secretary to the Cabinet and
Clerk of the Privy Council to the position of Secretary of Cabinet for Federal
Provincial Affairs and appointed Michael Pitfield Clerk and Secretary to
Cabinet. This allowed a
bureaucrat with wide experience and a good understanding of the government’s
needs, to focus on issues related to keeping the country together and freed
the new clerk to handle the difficult job of acting as the Prime Minster’s
Deputy Minister and administer the Public Service.
Issues of national security are
now assuming a magnitude similar to that of the Quebec file in the 1970’s
and a similar solution merits consideration. We need someone very senior, with
a senior bureaucracy, to deal with issues like national security.
Among the issues to be dealt with
is the United States file, with
complex inter-relationships like border security intelligence sharing,
military cooperation, homeland defence and a range of trade issues.
The management of national
disasters, terrorist attacks, SARS, electrical blackouts etc. all require
attention from a structure used to emergency response with the ability to
analyze, coordinate, command, and communicate.
Currently, the Deputy Prime
Minister, with a very small staff in
PCO, about 55 persons, and an ad hoc Cabinet committee is handling the
American file and border issues. This
is a good basis to expand from to create a structure that moves Canada from a
form of ad hoc management to one better suited to deal with the asymmetrical
threats of the 21st century.
The Committee believes that
Canadians would be best served if a strong deputy prime minister (such as Don
Mazankowski in the Brian Mulroney government or Allan MacEachen in the Pierre
Trudeau government) were to be appointed to handle key issues on a day-to-day
basis, briefing the Prime Minister regularly and bringing him in at crunch
time.We recommend the components of the National Security Structure would be
as follows:
|
·
A permanent Cabinet committee chaired by the Deputy Prime
Minister ·
An additional Secretary to the Cabinet as its senior official ·
A permanent
Secretariat within PCO dedicated to
national security issues ·
A restructuring of current procedures The
Cabinet Committee would include the following Ministers: ·
Foreign Affairs ·
Defence ·
Solicitor General ·
Health ·
Finance ·
Justice ·
Immigration ·
Others as required |
The
Secretariat within PCO would include sufficient senior officials who have a
good understanding of government capabilities, together with a grasp of issues
and interests of importance to Canada.
More
specifically Canada needs to centralize its capability to coordinate the
collection of intelligence from various Canadian intelligence agencies and
from allies; to analyze and fuse this intelligence ensuring its appropriate
dissemination to client agencies; and to prepare a daily, or more frequent,
intelligence appreciation for the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and
others, as required.
Canada
needs the capacity to ensure that all government departments are working in
concert on national security issues.
Canada
needs the ability to provide clear articulation of the Prime Minister’s,
Deputy Prime Minister’s and Cabinet Committee’s wishes in a manner that
specifies desired outcomes and rules of engagement on national security.
Canada
needs to be able to communicate quickly and effectively through preemption of
the airways, if necessary, and in an oral or written manner. It must ensure that the government is clearly understood in times of
emergency and that the government, in turn, has a clear understanding of
the concerns and needs of the people.
A
National Operations Centre (NOC) should be created together with a duplicate
backup facility at another location.
The
principal features of the NOC would be space for the cabinet committee to meet
in a secure facility close to Parliament
Hill. The facility would also
include space for representatives from up to fifty government agencies to meet
face to face and receive the same information in a variety of modes.
The facility would include sufficient space for meetings of sub groups,
offices, limited food preparation and sleeping.
All
communication facilities would have multiple redundancies to transmit and
receive information and for power and water.
This
facility is where planning, ongoing analysis, and regular exercises would take
place and it would be a location where government leadership would be
exercised in emergencies.
The
facility would include a media component where media could receive briefings
and have available alternative communication facilities in the event theirs
became inoperative.
|
1.
Special emphasis would be placed on communication with
parliamentarians and other levels of government. 2. The permanent senior staff of the facility would include an official in charge of deputy minister rank together with 30 or so recently retired senior public servants. |
The
latter is a new concept to address the difficulty of attracting people with
the appropriate qualifications to work in the field of emergency preparedness.
Operations Centres are not usually seen as attractive postings in
bureaucracies because the focus is on doing a job rather than building a
career. Managers often delegate junior or less promising employees to
operations centres. In this case, more is needed.
What
is required is a group of people with a good cross section of experience,
particularly in previous crises, who have a current understanding at the most
senior levels of the capabilities of the various government departments, and
their personnel. They would be responsible for developing plans, co-ordinating
exercises and supervising the National Operations Centre and its necessary
support staff.
The senior staff would be
appointed on retirement from the public service (or elsewhere) for a period
from 2-4 years.
|
3.
The Political head of the operation would be the Deputy Prime
Minister. This person would be selected with National Security concerns
in mind and would have additional responsibilities for the US file. A
structure of this nature would be particularly advantageous to the Prime
Minister. Frequently
a Prime Minister may want to distance herself or himself from an issue
but because the staff are all in a division of PCO, the PM would be
confident that his or her interests were taken into account and it would
also simplify the PM’s integration into the issue if that was
considered necessary. 4.
The National Security staff and the National Operations centre
would provide for a closer integration of the officials such as the
Chief of Defence staff, the Commissioner of the RCMP, the Director of
CSIS, who seldom meet collectively or individually with the Prime
Minister or Deputy Prime Minister. We would have more effective crisis
management if they did. And emergency leadership could proceed in a
seamless manner. |
The
Committee recommends that:
5.1.
The position of Deputy Prime Minister become a permanent component of
the federal political structure.
5.2.
The Deputy Prime Minister be given permanent responsibility for
Canada’s U.S. File, borders, national security issues, natural and man-made
disasters and coasts.[1]
5.3.
The Deputy Prime Minister be provided with adequate bureaucratic
support within a branch of the Privy Council Office to fund and direct a
structure for maritime security in addition to other responsibilities listed
in 5.2.
5.4.
This national security structure containing the following be set up
within 60 days:
A permanent Cabinet committee chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister
The Cabinet Committee would include the following ministers:
o
Foreign Affairs
o
Defence
o
Solicitor General
o
Health
o
Finance
o
Justice
o
Immigration
o
Others as required
An additional Secretary to the Cabinet as its senior official
A permanent Secretariat within PCO dedicated to national security
issues
The Secretariat within PCO would include sufficient senior officials
who have a good understanding of government capabilities, together with a
grasp of issues and interests of importance to Canada.
A restructuring of current procedures to permit this Secretariat to
address issues of national security and common US/Canada security issues.
5.5.
The permanent secretariat to support the Deputy Prime Minister be
formed within two months, and that they set up operations in a temporary
government facility until the permanent national operations centres are built.
5.6.
A national operations centre complete with a senior level
"situation room" be constructed that would permit a permanent
secretariat to continuously monitor international and national events that
might affect the national security of Canada. This operations centre should be
located within easy physical access to the Privy Council Office, with complete
and redundant power and national level communications.
5.7.
An alternate, mirror image operations centre be designed and
constructed utilizing different sources of power and communications than the
primary facility.
CHAPTER SIX:
The need for Enhanced
The Committee’s main focus with
regard to improved international cooperation in past reports has been on
Canada-U.S. coordination. The Committee made several recommendations in The
Defence of North America: a Canadian Responsibility.
These included:
|
1.
Greater cooperation and coordination with U.S. counterparts. 2.
The establishment of a Canadian-U.S. joint operational planning
group that would include representatives of the Canadian Navy, the
Canadian Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard. This unit
of approximately 50 people should be located at Colorado Springs, in
proximity to NORAD planning staff. 3.
Establishment of
multi-departmental operations centres at Halifax on the East Coast and
Esquimalt on the West Coast that would be capable of collecting and
analyzing shipping intelligence to provide a combined operational
picture for all government agencies that deal with incoming vessels; to
address coastal threats to North America and design procedures to deal,
with all anticipated scenarios, with representatives from the U.S. Coast
Guard, the U.S. Navy and the Canadian Navy.
|
In this report, the Committee will
consider the government’s response to those recommendations. It will also
address other aspects of the need for Canada and the United States to
cooperate in the defence of North America.
Finally, the Committee will
examine the need to better coordinate surveillance and intelligence with
countries other than the United States
– particularly those countries with large ports through which a
majority of Canada-bound vessels embark.
“There
is a lot of dialogue and understanding [with the U.S.], but there is
definitely room for more. There is always a need for more
discussions. They certainly have a different approach from ours.” Gerry
Frappier, Chair, Interdepartmental Marine Security Working Group (IMSWG)
With reference to the three
Committee recommendations listed above, it is fair to say that there has been
at least marginal progress on the first – better cooperation with U.S.
counterparts – although there is no evidence that either country has
appreciated the degree of importance that should be attached to establishing
and implementing a joint plan for defence of the continent.
One example of marginal,
undramatic improvement in this direction has been the establishment of the
Canada-U.S. bi-national planning group with a two-year mandate to enhance
military cooperation for the protection of North America – a laudable
response to our second recommendation listed above (that such a joint
operational planning group should be set up in proximity to NORAD headquarters
at Colorado Springs).
Any excitement Committee members
felt initially at the establishment of this planning group has been muted by
slow progress in turning the group into anything meaningful.
The Committee may be wrong here,
but if this group is going to play an important role in harmonizing the
defence capacity of the two countries, the pace at which this imperative is
being approached does not reflect any great sense of urgency.
First the good news: Vice-Admiral
Ron Buck told the Committee that not only had the overall planning group
been established and was in motion: “In January, the Canada-U.S.
bi-national planning group completed its mission analysis session in Colorado,
and will soon embark upon the production of bi-national plans to improve our
ability to work in the domestic bi-national context from the national
perspective.”
Admiral Buck testified that a
subsidiary planning group focusing on coastal defence had also been
established – the Maritime Plans and Surveillance Working Group.
He said this group will concentrate on bi-national maritime security
and surveillance, working in collaboration with groups like Interdepartmental
Maritime Security Working Group (IMSWG) and the NORAD Maritime Surveillance
Working Group. This group, he said, is “coordinated” with the Canadian
Navy’s operations centres in Halifax and Esquimalt:
“the
planning group is structured to report any plans jointly through the Deputy
Chief of Defence Staff and me, and ultimately to the two coastal formations.
That is consistent and cohesive.”
The Committee, of course, in our
third recommendation listed above, had called for the establishment of
Canadian multi-departmental operations centres at Halifax on the East Coast
and Esquimalt on the West Coast, with desks for personnel from the U.S. Coast
Guard, the U.S. Navy. As discussed earlier in this report, that recommendation
has been ignored. The Canadian Navy, the RCMP, the Canadian Coast Guard, and
other agencies involved in coastal security continue to maintain separate
operational headquarters, without U.S. liaison personnel, without any fusion
centre.
The Bad News
It is one thing to establish a
Canada-U.S. bi-national planning group. It is another thing to inject some
sense of urgency that it could play a very useful role in the defence of North
America.
For instance, the Committee
recommended that a contingent of about 50 Canadians should staff the planning
group at Colorado Springs. Admiral Buck told us that Canada envisioned sending
30 instead. That is, at least, within the realm of what the Committee had in
mind. When he testified in April, Admiral Buck acknowledged that only seven
Canadian representatives were on site at the time, but added that he expected
the full contingent would be there by summer, when the group would begin its
work “in earnest.”
Furthermore, U.S. representatives
on the planning group are “double-hatted” – that is, they hold other
positions in the U.S. military or U.S. government. Admiral Buck
interpreted this as being a good
thing – “We need to ensure that the U.S. personnel tied to the planning
group have the right operational links inside the U.S. government departments
and agencies. It is not only Homeland Security.”
The point seems to be that the new
U.S. Department of Homeland Security is involved in enough jurisdictional
wrangles within the U.S. government that representatives of those many
jurisdictions are needed on deck when any meaningful planning is done. This
smacks of the kind of thinking that created Canada’s Interdepartmental
Maritime Security Working Group – gather people together with other
priorities together in common cause and hope for the best.
How seriously is the planning
group’s mission really being taken?
Consider that neither Canada nor
the United States provided immediate dedicated resources to the planning
group. Instead, for the most part, they simply “rearranged” the
responsibilities of existing personnel in NORAD and Northern Command in
Colorado Springs.
In fact, only a handful of
additional Canadian personnel were posted to Colorado Springs until this
summer, and the U.S. has yet to dedicate any full time resources to this
venture. Could it be that Northern Command is so busy trying to establish a
viable position within the
American military structure that it doesn’t have much time for the
U.S.-Canada planning group?
On August, 2003, a Department of
National Defence website stated that “To date, the group has 22 people, 18
of whom are Canadians.”[2] It is bad
enough that, a third of the way through the group’s mandate, Canada only had
18 out of an announced 30-person staff in place. For its part the U.S.
government had dedicated only 4 part-time personnel to the mission.
Canadian Army Col. David
Fraser, co-director of the Binational Planning Group
provided a progress report to the Binational Military Coordination Committee
In this report, he stated that, with these 18 Canadians and four Americans,
the group was “almost fully staffed right now so I think it’s very fair
to say that they’re just beginning their work.”
It
is probably also very fair to say that this may be a good idea going nowhere
– slowly.
Canada-U.S. Intelligence
Coordination
Ward Elcock, Director of the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service,
told the Committee that there is extensive and on-going intelligence
co-operation between Canada and the United States. Mr. Elcock noted that Louis
Freeh, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
told a conference in Whistler in March, 2002
that “With respect to the Canadian and US partnership . . . in the
areas of terrorism, cross-border crime, espionage, there is actually no
stronger relationship that exists in the world, at least in my experience,
than between the law enforcement [and] intelligence services of both
countries, and I know from a first-hand position.”
Canada-U.S. Customs and
Immigration Coordination
Several examples of efforts to
improve coordination between U.S. and Canadian customs and immigration
operatives were noted in Chapter 3 – The Need for Better Surveillance.
We
have already said that one of these efforts – the In Transit Targeting
Initiative – makes little sense to the Committee, in that it places U.S.
targeters at Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver in an effort to target dangerous
cargo headed for the United States, but it also places Canadian targeters at
Newark and Seattle. These Canadian targeters are apparently looking for
containers that would wreak havoc in Canada but are passing through the United
States en route to their northern target. This seems unlikely: terrorists have
been accused of being venal, but they have never been accused of being as
stupid as this. The Committee suggests that these Canadian officers be
relocated to more likely terrorist embarkation points.
Other initiatives by the Canada
Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) – such as the Canada-U.S. initiative
designed to enhance Canadian and U.S. border security at ferry terminals
through the adoption of a series of benchmark security measures – make far
more sense. The truth is that despite allegations in some U.S. circles that
Canadian border security is weak, until recently Canadian customers and
immigration placements at Canada-U.S. border points were more generously
staffed than U.S. locations. Furthermore, Canadian training appears to be
superior.
As Denis Lefebvre, Assistant
Commissioner, Customs Branch, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency,
told the Committee:
“The
Canada Customs and Revenue Agency has a school in Halifax to teach officers
how to search ships. There are only a couple of customs administrations in the
world that have that. We have an excellent reputation. We have students from
other customs administrations. We would love to have U.S. customs officers
attend there to follow the course. They do not have anything close to it. In
that regard, I think that we are ahead.”
It is
the Committee’s belief that the two main problems with Canada’s customs
and immigration placements – which applies not just to U.S. border points,
but at other locations as well – are lack of trained personnel to operate
new scanning equipment, some of which sits idle, and lack of advance
information on ship passengers similar to that provided on air passengers
under the Advanced Passenger Information (API) agreement.
However the Canada Customs and
Revenue Agency and its U.S.
counterparts do deserve credit for undertaking initiatives that serve as
models for Canada’s shipping agreements with other countries. For instance,
CCRA and the U.S. Customs Service have recently implemented a program whereby
data on in-transit shipments is sent electronically into the United States
Automated Targeting System. This enables officers to do an automated first
sort of manifest information. This electronic sort saves valuable time for the
targeters and allows them to concentrate their work on the highest risk
shipments.
Canada
and the World
When
Ms. Maureen Tracy of the Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency
appeared before the Committee, she acknowledged that targeting shipments
arriving from other ports is not always easy, because officers are not always
sure as to the actual origin of various components of any shipment. In her
words: “There are
containers that have a somewhat limited history.”
A
ship loads at one port . . . arrives at another . . . partially unloads . . .
picks up more cargo . . . proceeds to the next port . . . repeats the routine
. . . and the cycle goes on.
Containers
that appear to come from, say, Rotterdam, may actually be from, say,
Algeciras. Some shipping companies are more reliable than others in
chronicling a shipment’s voyage.
Canada
is currently attempting to increase the percentage nationally of arriving
shipments that are scanned or searched by one means or another from three per
cent to six per cent. [The Committee received testimony that in Halifax the
rate is eight per cent.] Those low percentages are not unusual – no country
can afford to inspect all, or even a majority, of arriving or outgoing
shipments.
However,
the Committee believes that countries of good will can enter a symbiotic
relationship to reduce the odds of failing to inspect dangerous cargo. Through
bilateral agreements, we believe that these countries can achieve the end
sought through the use of the United States Automated Targeting System (see
above): to save valuable time for targeters, allowing them to concentrate on
high risk shipments.
To
do this, customs officers need to have a better sense of which shipments are
low-risk.
A Web of International Maritime Colleagues
Different
methods of searching vessels and containers are more thorough than others. In
modern ports around the world, a variety of search and scanning methodologies
are used.
The
most thorough, of course, is taking a container to a warehouse and destuffing
it manually. Such searches are time-consuming, expensive and rare, for obvious
reasons.
Other technologies, of varying
efficacy in different situations, include the Vehicle and Cargo Inspection
Systems (VACIS) machine (stationary gamma radiation equipment capable of
scanning a container in five seconds), mobile/pallet gamma rays, radiation
detection equipment, hand-held ion scans, remotely operated vehicles, tool
trucks, and biological and chemical weapons detectors.
What
Canada needs to pursue are bilateral agreements whereby ports in other
signatory countries advise our customs officials of two things before a vessel
departs for Canada:
o
Details pertaining to ship, crew and cargo
o
Information on how thoroughly items on a full list of cargo were
scanned
Details
pertaining to ship, crew and cargo are supposed to be sent electronically to
customs officials in countries belonging to the International Maritime
Organization starting in 2004. Ocean carriers and freight forwarders are
responsible for sending this information. How reliable are shippers and
forwarders? Very few containers are loaded right at ports, and police and
customs auditing of the companies responsible for shipments is negligible. The
Committee believes that a more reliable and trustworthy system could be
established under reciprocal agreements whereby port officials forward details
on crews and shipments.
At
the same time, port officials could – through a numbers or letters rating
system – indicate which pieces of cargo had been searched, and how
thoroughly. For instance, a manual destuffing might rate a 10, a Vehicle and
Cargo Inspection Systems (VACIS) machine scanning a 7, and so on. Various
combinations and permutations are possible, of course. Higher numbers might be
assigned to containers searched in two or three signatory ports before they
arrived in Canada. If Canada signed agreements with a number of countries, it
could lead to much more effective targeting when cargo vessels arrive at our
ports.
Much to Learn
Canadian
security officials should be doing some scanning themselves – overseas. We
have plenty to learn from other countries. The United States, for instance,
has security and intelligence officials at many ports abroad. Why aren’t
Canada’s CSIS officials abroad collecting intelligence in foreign ports that
regularly load vessels bound for Canada? The Committee learned that the CSIS
officer at the Canadian Embassy in The Hague never went to the Port of
Rotterdam on business, focusing her attention instead on the International
Court at The Hague. The latter is a commendable initiative, but so is
assessment of what kind of suspicious vessels might be departing the
Netherlands for Canada.
There
is much to learn in Rotterdam. The Dutch port is far better policed than
Canadian ports, and has introduced a system whereby its police no longer focus
on incidents. Rather, they have introduced a problem-oriented system with a
project-style approach to solving those problems. Officials no longer rely on
companies to report crime – their teams determine what kind of crime is
taking place, and send teams out to engage in thorough investigations.
These
are just a few examples of how Canada could learn from a thorough study of how
other countries are using their coast guards, to how they are scrutinizing
their ports, to what methodology works best for them in remote areas.
Recommendations
The Committee
recommends that:
6.1.
Both U.S. and Canadian governments address the work of the planning
groups seriously and provide the necessary personnel to do it.
6.2.
The Government of the United States be invited to place liaison
officers at East Coast, West Coast and Great Lakes multi-departmental
operations centres where intelligence is fused and analyzed if and when the
Government of Canada sees fit to establish those centres.
6.3.
The Government of Canada enter into reciprocal bilateral agreements
with major shipping countries that outline ways that these countries will
assist each other on advance information on vessels, crews, cargo and
indicators of which cargo items have already been inspected in various ways.
6.4.
The Government of Canada commission a report on how other countries are
upgrading their maritime security, with particular reference to the use of
coast guards and anti-crime and anti-terrorism methodology at sea ports and
airports.
[1] The Committee will prepare, in the future, reports on first responders, the intelligence community and other security matters. While arguments have been made in this report why coastal defence should be under the Deputy Prime Minister, the rationale for including intelligence fusion and the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness (OCIPEP) will be provided in subsequent reports.